Sick Cory?

[ivnabru]

I did a 3rd 25% change in 3 days. Ammonia is still about the same so that's bad news.

The fish that was staying at the top is now acting normal again so maybe hopefully he's over the hump.

They all seem fine right now, but I'll be doing daily water changes until I can get the ammonia back to normal levels.

I don't have any bubbles, are they important? I read with Corys they just swim to the top to get oxygen so it's not a neccessity. But, maybe they are important?

[Gemini]

I've always found that when cycling a tank with fish, bubbles seem to make it all a bit easier on the fish. Corys do swim to the top, but that shouldn't be their main source of air. They should be able to absorb from the water. I would get a cheap air pump and a bit of air hose and just pop it in there to give them a bit more air. With ammonia the extra air also helps with the break down process (I believe).

[ivnabru]

Sounds good, I'll get one tomorrow after work.

The poor Cory was looking good all day, now he's just hanging around upside down again. Hopefully I can save him.

[TorqueWorks]

My Baby Panda Cory the other day was doing the same thing, swimming upside down skimming the gravel. Now its fine. Are you treating the water before you put it in the tank? You can also try to get some used gravel from a friends tank, put it in a nylon and tie the end off. Drop it in the tank. It will help add more good bacteria into the tank. You can also get a used filter and put it in along with your filter. (I now going to do this after all of my filter changes, just put my old one in front of the new one for a few days to get things started.) Doing this helped my tank last week with the same problem. Good luck.

[ivnabru]

I broke down and bought some stuff that's supposed to make the ammonia less toxic since it's spiraling out of control. The Nitrates/nitrites are still at zero, but I have a lot of plants which keep those lower. With that chemical how do I work the water changes? Do I stop doing them daily and just every 3 days when I add new chemical. Or do I keep doing them normally. Or do I keep doing them daily, but add new chemical every single day? I don't want to add too much of this stuff, but I also want to keep the changes up to get the ammonia level down as quickly as possible.

[nwnittany]

I think you'll probably get a lot of different opinions on how to handle this situation.

I was in a similar situation and here's what I did:

- I treated the water with ammo-lock. ammo-lock doesn't eliminate ammonia, it just converts it to ammonium, a less-toxic form. Ammonium can still be used by the beneficial bacteria to propagate your cycle. I don't remember if I treated it daily or not. Best to read the instructions and make adjustments based on your water changes.

- I did daily water changes.

- I did daily water tests.

- I kept my temperature at 78 (helps the cycle)


If you use a chemical like ammo-lock, your test kit will still report the ammonium as part of the ammonia reading. In other words, it will still look like ammonia on your strip/tube. So, you won't really be able to go by this reading to determine the state of things (at least not in the begining).

The ammo-lock (or equivalent) and water changes are done to keep the fish alive. The water tests are done to monitor the progress of your cycle and to tell you when you no longer need to use the ammo-lock.

The first sign of your cycle progressing will be some nitrites. About the same time you will see a 'bloom' (sudden cloudy water). The bloom is normal and is just the sudden growth of some of the bacteria (to be honest, I don't know the full biological explanation for what causes it and what makes it go away, but it will come and go and things will be just fine).

On side comment/question. What is your pH ? The lower the pH, the less toxic ammonia is to the fish. So, 6.4-7.0 would be great. However, if it gets too low, I've read the cycle will develop more slowly.

Hang in there and keep up on the water changes. You'll be doing them in 5 minutes after a few days...

I feel your pain. I went through the same thing.

[ivnabru]

Ammonia went out of control after the 1st post probably got to 4 or 5. Then suddenly today it's back down to 1ppm. The chemical I used was like ammolock just made the ammonia less dangerous. So, I guess my mini-cycle is either finished or moving right along. All of the Corys look good right now, and I still haven't lost any about 3 months into my tank. Hopefully I'm not celebrating too fast, but it seems to be fixing up some.

I think the Corys did a lot of it themselves, I hardly fed them this week so they'd go ahead and clean the tank themselves some.

[nwnittany]

Do you happen to have a test kit to measure either nitrites or nitrates ?

If you've seen a spike in your nitrites and/or some nitrates, it would seem like your cycle is well on its way.

Congrats !

[ivnabru]

Looks like it.

At least this cycle is a whole lot faster than the 1st one.

None are too high on the card Nitrates 10ppm, Nitrites 1ppm and the fish look like they're doing well. And Ammonia standing steady at 1ppm.

I think in the future I'll be a lot more careful about replacing the filter.